Although about a month had passed since cleansing the garden of the head maid Eledrun Hills, Roxiana was not impatient. She took time to find out where the dead forest was through conversations with spirits, while practicing to better receive spirits.

With repeated practice, it seemed she had gained some clues. Rather than just grabbing and pulling them in, it was less tiring to accept spirits by creating a passage in her body and gently guiding them.

The lower spirits enjoyed being drawn to Roxiana’s power, but were also anxious about it.

−We simply exist. Just by being there, we can influence many lives.

−But when we’re drawn in by spirit users like you, we can use our power more properly. That’s why we’re happy.

−It’s fine to use lower spirits like us, but don’t think about using the higher spirits, Roxy. Using their power, even for someone like you, is something you must pay a price for.

−It’s because it chips away at your life force that the higher spirits don’t like it. If used wrongly, even your soul can shatter. If your soul keeps breaking before it can recover, you’ll become nothing.

Still, Roxiana thought it didn’t matter.

This life only needed to last until she reclaimed her family’s bodies and made them kneel. After that, her soul could become whatever it may.

As long as she could return her family to God’s embrace and hold those she hated accountable, it didn’t matter if her soul shattered to pieces.

‘I never thought I could achieve everything I wanted without any cost from the beginning.’

If she had only wanted to meet her family again after death, she wouldn’t have harbored such vengeance. Of course, she hoped for the day she would reunite with her family in God’s embrace, but more than that.

‘I can’t forgive them.’

She simply couldn’t leave them be. Just imagining them sleeping comfortably in bed with their legs stretched out, without any guilt, made her stomach churn.

The anger she couldn’t express to anyone was piling up inside Roxiana, hardening like a solid rock.

Snapping out of her thoughts at the feeling of something licking the back of her hand, Roxiana realized she had been gripping Lion’s front paw too tightly. The small wolf, which hadn’t grown at all compared to a month ago, sat beside Roxiana, licking her hand while its paw was held.

“I’m sorry, Lion. I gripped too hard.”

Lion wagged its tail generously as if to say it was okay. Stroking Lion’s back, Roxiana said,

“They say a wolf’s lifespan is about 15 years. By then, will I be able to finish what I need to do?”

To Roxiana, who had no one else to get close to, Lion had become a substitute for family. Now that she found it hard to imagine life without this small wolf, she thought it wouldn’t be so bad to close her eyes together on the day this wolf left the world.

Lion, who had been comfortably snuggled up, suddenly bristled its fur. As Roxiana was worriedly checking if something was wrong, Petria announced Floyd’s visit. He was waiting in the reception room on the first floor.

“You’re not tensing up because you sensed the Grand Duke’s arrival, are you?”

Roxiana tapped Lion’s nose bridge and was about to leave the bedroom’s adjoining reception room when Lion followed. Not minding the young wolf that seemed still tense following her closely, Roxiana headed to the first floor with the wolf.

Floyd was looking out at the garden from the window of the reception room.

When Roxiana entered, he slowly turned around. Was it because she hadn’t seen him in a while? For some reason, she felt a distant feeling, but couldn’t understand why.

After carefully examining Roxiana, who had narrowed her eyes, he smiled freshly.

“You’re keeping your promise well.”

Promise?

Momentarily puzzled, Roxiana recalled the promise he had forced her to make. That promise to live well, eating and sleeping properly for a year.

As anger towards Lucas and Elise filled her mind, she had forgotten the promise she made with him. Even the fact that there was a time when she only wished for death seemed distant.

‘Right, back then, the reality of having to live another year was so painful it felt suffocating.’

The longing for death hadn’t disappeared, but it had been postponed a little. She couldn’t die yet.

Floyd stared intently at Roxiana, who lowered her eyes to hide the fiercely burning anger. During the month or so he hadn’t been able to meet her, she had noticeably become healthier.

Color had returned to her once pale skin, and she had gained some weight. Only the flash that momentarily passed through her eyes bothered him.

‘So she still wants revenge?’

Though he didn’t approve of revenge, he thought it wasn’t a bad goal for now. If he took away her desire for revenge now, she might lose her will to live again.

Whatever it was that made her burn, having the will to live was important right now.

“Did you have something to tell me?”

“Won’t you offer me a cup of tea?”

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

Roxiana blushed at the thought that she had been impolite and called a maid to ask for tea to be brought. Floyd was relieved to see the maid respond with a bright expression.

‘It seems she’s getting along well with the employees now too.’

Floyd was also aware of the complaints of the employees who came to work for Roxiana at the White Lily Palace. At first, he was so angry he wanted to call them all in and scold them, but he realized it wasn’t a problem that could be solved by getting angry.

Blindly criticizing their attitude risked increasing their dissatisfaction. It was important to make them serve Roxiana sincerely from their hearts. That wasn’t something Floyd could do for her.

Roxiana had succeeded in winning their hearts in a short time. It wasn’t just because she had treated the victims contaminated by demonic energy.

−’They say the princess treats the employees well. Everyone says they’ve never met such a kind and gentle princess before.’

It was the head attendant, Jenail Cohiten, who relayed those words. So even when Floyd learned that Roxiana did laundry and cooking, he no longer scolded her.

Fortunately, for whatever reason, she had recently almost stopped doing chores like laundry and cooking, but the employees’ attitude towards her hadn’t changed.

‘What do I want to do by putting this woman in the White Lily Palace?’

Floyd suddenly wondered.

He had never thought about what he wanted to do by having Roxiana establish her position in the White Lily Palace. While urging her to have the will to live by telling her to try living for a year, he hadn’t thought about her future.

‘She’ll leave the Grand Duke’s palace someday.’

He couldn’t keep Roxiana, who had no blood relation, in the Grand Duke’s palace forever. Just as you should release a wounded wild animal back into the wild after treating it, Roxiana too would have to be sent away from this Grand Duke’s palace someday.

That was also for Roxiana’s sake.

‘If I keep a woman of marriageable age here, rumors will turn bad.’

If Roxiana would allow it, he needed to somehow erase the slave brand on her shoulder, grant her a new status, and let her live a new life.

He wasn’t sure how Lucas would react when he found out she was alive, but he didn’t care about his attacks. Wherever she was, he could protect her.

Just as that woman Elise had been granted territory and become a lord, it might be good to give Roxiana a territory too.

Since she’s a clever woman, she would govern it well. If he sent Hexten along to protect her, he wouldn’t have to worry much about Lucas’s side.

‘But why do I feel bad? It seems like quite a good idea.’

While Floyd was thinking various thoughts, the gray wolf sitting next to Roxiana was staring intently at Floyd. Floyd was bothered by its gaze.

‘Does that thing see me as prey?’

When their eyes met, the wolf bared its teeth, and as Floyd was about to say something, the maid came with tea. The gold tray was placed on the table between the sofas.

After the maid left, Roxiana picked up the teapot and poured the tea. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she elegantly poured the tea, tucking one side of her long hair behind her ear.

Though she wasn’t moving particularly slowly, to Floyd’s eyes, all her actions seemed to move very slowly, deeply imprinting in his mind. As if branded.

“It seems Lucas has joined hands with a woman named Elise.”

Floyd blurted out almost impulsively. Roxiana, whom he expected to be flustered, showed no reaction and finished pouring the tea, placing the teacup in front of Floyd. Floyd thought she hadn’t heard him.

Only after filling her own teacup did Roxiana speak.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I heard that woman was your friend.”

“She was a friend.”

Roxiana replied softly as she picked up her teacup. She covered her trembling lips with the teacup and pretended to be fine as she took a sip of tea.

‘She was such a good friend.’

The moment their names came out of his mouth together, she felt her heart being torn apart. It felt as if the organs inside her body were tumbling around chaotically and then exploding.

‘She was a friend who cried and laughed, pitying my situation.’

Elise’s face crying and laughing in the underground prison appeared vividly as if right in front of her.

‘She was a very kind-hearted friend who apologized after killing my family and throwing them into a well.’

Those cruel blue eyes that watched Roxiana’s expression while telling her that fact.

‘When your family was exiled for committing crimes, I saved you alone! A friend with such passionate friendship that she even resented that fact!’